THE WINTER OF 1968-69
came early to Nebraska. Dirty snow piles thrived in the shelter belts well
before
Thanksgiving. By Christmas, with cornfields under three feet of glazed
snow, stockmen faced
four months of bawling cows and dwindling hay. January brought twenty
straight days
of sub-zero temperatures. Normal cafe lamentations gained a certain
urgency. The only light spot, aside from the usual run of
stale Nixon jokes, was the communal anticipation that, if Lyle ran true to
form, some of the immigrants would be getting an education before this
cold snap was finished.

Lyle, school custodian extraordinaire, regarded the brutal
winter as a heavenly gift. What better opportunity to expose certain pushy
administrators and newish faculty members to the
realities of life? In between hands of solitaire, cozy in the bowels of
the school's ancient boiler room, Lyle
allowed the temperature upstairs to drop. Not all at once, but a degree or
two a day, until the thermometer rested uncomfortably at 39 degrees. Cold
enough those
mud-tracking little fourth graders could see their breath, cold enough that
every oven
door in the school kitchen was open and breathing fire, but no cold enough
to freeze pipes.